The face in the glass was red as a sunset in harvest-time. The eyes I saw there popped wildly.
"Bertram!"
"Yes; I hear you! [Confound it.]"
"Supper, Bertram. We are all waiting."
I deigned no answer.
Then father rang. Oh, I knew it was father. I looped desperately and hauled again like a sailor at his cordage, and so, muttering, wrung out a bow-knot. Then in the mirror I took a last despairing look, leaped for the doorway, slipped, stumbled, and almost fell upon the stairs, hearing below me a lusty warning—"Here he comes!"—and so emerged, rosy, a youth-illumined, with something lavender, they tell me, fluttering in my teeth (and something blood-red, I could tell them, trembling in my heart).
And there she was!
There she stood in the smiling midst of them, smiling herself and giving me her hand—Cousin Dove—Cousin Dove McLean, at the first sight of whom my shyness vanished.
"Your tie, my son, seems a trifle—"
So this was Cousin Dove?—this was the daughter of the golden waistcoat—this brown-eyed school-girl with brown—no, as I lived!—red hair.